Palm Beach estate bankruptcy auction pitted Trump, Epstein

Friday

The future president submitted highest bid for property owned by the late Abe Gosman, who had bought it from Jeffrey Epstein business associate and retail mogul Leslie Wexner.

A dozen years before he won the White House, Donald Trump emerged victorious in a 2004 bankruptcy auction in which the prize was a 6-acre oceanfront estate in Palm Beach.

Trump bid against two others in the West Palm Beach courtroom, including a man he had known socially and sometimes saw at his Mar-a-Lago Club — financier Jeffrey Epstein, a part-time Palm Beacher who today is infamous as a convicted sex offender. Epstein in July pleaded not guilty to new federal sex-trafficking charges involving teenage girls in New York.

Up for grabs in the auction was the North County Road estate owned by then nursing-home magnate Abe Gosman, who died in 2013. Trump submitted the winning bid of $41.35 million bid for the property, which would prove to have another connection to Epstein. The estate was formerly owned by retail magnate Leslie Wexner, who is the only publicly identified client of Epstein’s eponymous financial advisory firm.

Wexner, a billionaire, is chairman and CEO of Ohio-based L Brands Inc., which owns Victoria’s Secret, among other brands. His business relationship with Epstein dated to the 1980s, according to multiple published reports. On July 15, the Wall Street Journal reported, Wexner sent a memo to employees of L Brands in which he said he had severed his relationship with Epstein — his former personal money manager — nearly 12 years ago.

Wexner in 1988 had sold the mostly vacant land in the 500 block of North County Road for $12 million to Gosman, who then completed the mansion that Wexner had designed for the property and filled it with his art collection.

Gosman later hit hard times, declared bankruptcy and lost his mansion to Trump.

>> FROM THE ARCHIVES: Trump wins Gosman mansion for $41 million

Wexner had bought the North County Road property in 1985, demolished a historic estate there known as Blythedunes, and laid plans to build a mansion there. But he abandoned those plans and sold his estate after Palm Beach officials reportedly irked him by refusing to let him open a Worth Avenue location of The Limited, the retail chain his company owned at the time.

“Palm Beach is a very small world,” said one Palm Beach real estate agent, who is familiar with property and had visited the mansion — since demolished — before it was sold at auction. “Isn’t it something that that all three — Trump, Epstein and Wexner — ended up involved in the same property, one way or another.”

Trump carried out renovations — mostly cosmetic — to the mansion before selling the estate in 2008 for what was then documented in courthouse records as a record-setting $95 million to Russian billionaire Dmitry Rybolovlev.

The Russian in 2016 demolished the house and subdivided the land into three 2-acre lots, which have sold for a combined $108 million. The buyers included developer Mark Pulte of Boca Raton-based Mark Timothy Inc., who is building a mansion there on speculation. Pulte knows the property well, as he had been one of the unsuccessful bidders in the 2004 auction.

>> RELATED: Trump's former estate — the story behind the $95-million mansion tear-down

A blow-by-blow account of the bidding was reported by The Washington Post on Wednesday in a story that also detailed how Epstein and Trump “swam in the same social pool. They were neighbors in Florida. They jetted from LaGuardia to Palm Beach together. They partied at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club and dined at Epstein’s Manhattan mansion.”

In 2002, The Washington Post reported, Trump called Epstein a “terrific guy” who was “a lot of fun to be with.” Photos and videos taken in 1992, 1997 and 2000 depict Epstein and Trump “posing together” at Mar-a-Lago, according to The Washington Post.

But on July 7, the day after Epstein was arrested at his New York home, Trump was asked in the Oval Office about the financier. “I was not a fan of his, that I can tell you,” Trump responded.

The Washington Post story also quoted Epstein’s brother, Mark. “They were good friends,” Mark Epstein said. “I know [Trump] is trying to distance himself, but they were.”

The report also suggested that Trump and Epstein’s friendship dissolved as a result of bad blood generated by the auction of the property on North County Road.

“Trump has not said why their relationship ruptured,” the newspaper reported, and quoted the president as saying: “The reason doesn’t make any difference, frankly.”

>> RELATED: Blythedunes, the Wrightsmans’ Palm Beach house, was razed, replaced — and later sold by Trump

The Palm Beach Daily News and The Palm Beach Post did not receive a response to an email sent to Wexner’s public relations team at L Brands Inc. requesting a comment for this story.

But Wexner this month distanced himself from Epstein in the employee memo quoted by the Wall Street Journal and other media outlets.

"I would never have guessed that a person I employed more than a decade ago could have caused such pain to so many people," Wexner reportedly wrote in the memo. "My heart goes out to each and every person who has been hurt."

Epstein was initially booked in Florida in 2006 after police said he had sex with underage girls whom he paid for massage sessions at his Palm Beach home on El Brillo Way. In 2008, Epstein entered a plea deal that led to his conviction on two state felony counts that included solicitation of a minor. The plea deal let him avoid harsher federal charges similar to the ones he now faces in New York. He has been charged there with two counts related to sex trafficking of minors and could face a maximum sentence of 45 years in prison if convicted.

Wexner's memo expressed regret that he had ever met Epstein, according to reports.

"I would not have continued to work with any individual capable of such egregious, sickening behavior as has been reported about him. As you can imagine, this past week I have searched my soul ... reflected ... and regretted that my path ever crossed his," the memo said.